Then He Kissed Me: A Cottonbloom Novel by Laura Trentham Read Free Book Online Page A

can still make me feel like I’m about ten though, and like she caught me doing something really bad.”
    “Like drinking unsweetened, hot tea?”
    Silence reigned for a measure of beats before her laughter peeled. “That is sacrilege, Nash Hawthorne.”
    “Scotland turned me pagan. Although, I never got used to eating kippers and black pudding for breakfast. Give me grits any day of the week.”
    “I hate grits.” Tally made a gagging sound. As minor as it was, he’d learned something new about her. How much didn’t he know and how much had changed? Before he could formulate a list of questions, she asked, “So what did you do for fun after your aunt moved you up here?”
    “I read. A lot. More than was healthy probably. Got even more into comic books. None of the kids on the street wanted to play with me, so I took to wandering down to the river.”
    “That’s a long way from here.”
    “It was my only form of rebellion. One Saturday, I went too far down river before turning back, and it was dark before I hit the road to town. Chief Thomason picked me up. I got grounded for two months. Not that it really mattered, since I had nowhere to go but school anyway. That was the extent of my excitement. What about you?”
    “What about me?”
    “What kind of trouble were you up to?”
    “I’m not sure I want to tell you.”
    “Geez, now you have to tell me or I’ll make up crazy stories.”
    “Like what?” Laughter lilted her voice.
    “Let’s see … you ran off and joined a troupe of travelling clowns for the summer. You attempted to learn their trade, but never made it beyond making a balloon weiner dog. You came home depressed that your lifelong dream of clownhood had been dashed.”
    Her laughter vibrated the mattress. “You are ridiculous.”
    “Anything you actually did will never live up to my imagination, so spill it.” He waited. The moment took on an importance beyond whatever stories she had to tell. A thirst to know everything about her plagued him.
    As she fiddled with the edge of the sheet, her laughter trailed off. “Pretty typical teenage stuff, I suppose. I stopped trying to be the good girl and started hanging out with a rougher crowd. The ones who cut classes on a regular basis to drink and smoke pot. Cade was strict, but he worked odd shifts. It was easy to sneak out. I’d finally found something I was good at.”
    Along with residual amusement, bitterness edged her words. He imagined her climbing out of her back window and into the hostas that grew around her house. “I always imagined you as homecoming queen or something. A tiara and everything.”
    She barked a laugh. “Football games and homecoming were not my thing.”
    “What about prom? Did you go?’
    “I got asked.”
    “But?”
    “We didn’t have the money for a dress and hair and stuff, so another girl and I drank some beers we’d filched from her dad and watched old movies. What about you? You go to prom?”
    He huffed. “Let’s see I was a sixteen-year-old senior who puberty bypassed. I was a foot shorter than most girls, my voice was still cracky, and my face could have been the before shot for an acne commercial. Even with all that, I somehow got up the courage to ask the head cheerleader to go with me.”
    Her gasp was half surprise, half laughter and she propped her head on a hand to face him. “What did she say?”
    “‘No.’ Actually, I think it was closer to ‘Hell no.’ After she finished laughing, of course.”
    “That must have been mortifying.”
    “Little bit.” Vast understatement. He’d pretended to be sick the next three days. He forced a nonchalant tone. “No regrets, right?”
    “ That I can’t say.”
    “What do you regret?”
    “Doing stuff that would have made things even harder for Cade if I’d been caught, but doing them anyway.”
    “What kind of stuff?”
    “I never turned down a dare. I drank liquor, smoked pot, skipped school. I once climbed the water tower over on